


Cupid, Draw Back Your Bow

by giddyant



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-07-10 09:00:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giddyant/pseuds/giddyant
Summary: "I hate to think of them pining after each other and not realising. It’s the things you don’t say that you regret, isn’t it?"Adam Young overhears a conversation and decides that, really, people making themselves miserable for no reason is completely pointless. Barbara Cartland novels, flowers and love songs can't do any harm, surely...Aziraphale and Crowley, for their part, deal with his interference as well as you might imagine.





	1. Chapter 1

Once upon a time…

But there was no time.

In the Beginning…

But this was before beginnings.

Well. There was nothing. Except there was the potential for everything. 

There was a Plan. 

The Plan would be praised to, ahem, high heaven. Invoked as an authority on all that was to follow. Part would be Great. Part would be Ineffable. It would, in its course, involve the Antichrist, a serpent (intermittent), a moped, a witch and a Principality (occasionally semi-incorporeal). It was well known that it would lead to the End of Everything.

What was not so well known was that it would also go _past_ the End of Everything. To more beginnings, to more ends and to many, many more in-betweens.

What would make things exciting would be Free Will. There would be things even She couldn’t predict, even if the eventual outcome was inevitable (and the inevitable outcome was certainly not predictable).

Unfortunately, free will also meant the free will to _not_ do something. For example, it meant deciding that the rut you found yourself in with the person-shaped being you have shared this spinning rock with for the last six millenia is just fine, thank you, and changing anything about that rut was something you might consider in another few centuries (you wouldn’t). 

If Herself had anything to say on the matter, she was keeping it quiet[1].'

But here and now, we are in a kitchen in a small town in the English countryside. It is mildly up in a heap due to the inhabitants being newly arrived. Two women are having a well-earned cup of tea and watching out of the corners of their eyes as four children ‘help’ by testing the garden’s suitability for a football game.

This is yet another step, out of billions, in the aforementioned Plan.

Anathema Device and Tracy Potts (formerly Madame Tracy) (formerly, formerly Marjorie Potts) sat at the kitchen table and tried their best to make small talk. 

Anathema would have been the first to admit that she wasn’t exactly good at making conversation with people, seeing as she had spent most of her life in a kind of Prophecy Hothouse. Most people got a thousand yard stare once she mentioned anything in the line of ‘end of the world’ or ‘antichrist’. Occasionally she got taken into quiet corners of rooms where she got earnestly asked if she needed help to escape a cult. Once, she’d got a marriage proposal. She had declined and he had shrugged it off, saying he’d look out for her once the ships had come for them all to take them to The Great Ones. Perhaps she should have taken his number to pass onto the people who wanted to deprogram her, but she hadn’t wanted to give him any encouragement.

And ever since she had burned the second volume of prophecies, she was even more useless at it. If it hadn’t been for the Them introducing her to their parents, she’d have had literally no-one to talk to in Tadfield, apart from Newt. And she liked Tadfield. She didn’t particularly want to leave Jasmine Cottage, especially when she had absolutely no idea as to what she’d be leaving _for_.

So, while she had to admit that she only had the apocalyps-ish (as Newt kind of endearingly put it) in common with Tracy and Shadwell, it was better than nothing.

"It’s going to be quite a change for you," mused Anathema. "Won’t you miss London?"

"Ooh no, dearie. It was past time, really, for retiring. Think I’ve burned my bridges there, to be honest with you. Well, Mr. Aziraphale did, anyway. Not much of a future for a medium who actually tells people what the dead think of them."

Anathema winced into her mug at the thought, having been the recipient of her dead ancestors’ opinions since long before she was born. 

"And Mr. Shadwell and I came into a bit of a windfall. Strange that we both had rich uncles who were ever so keen to leave their fortunes to us."

"Strange. Yes."

"Never even knew I had an Uncle Anthony." 

Anathema choked on her tea and Tracy gave her a knowing smile.

Anathema had had trouble remembering specifics from the day the world hadn’t ended, but she remembered those two. Especially as she had found a business card for an ‘Anthony J. Crowley, Esq.’ in her pocket the day after.

"Have you had… any contact with them since?" 

"Mr. Crowley and Mr. Aziraphale? I called to the shop[2]' to have a chat a few times."

Anathema couldn’t quite imagine ‘having a chat’ with an actual Angel Of The Lord. Where would you even start? Sorry, could you just go back to what you were saying about a garden? Did you actually mean Eden or did I get confused?

She said as much.

"Well, dearie, it wasn’t that kind of a chat really. I just wanted to see how he was. You know, I was a bit worried, considering how we left things. Thought they might get in trouble with, well…" she trailed off, then pointed first to the sky, then the ground. 

"Oof. Yeah. They didn’t seem like the kind of bosses who would give a verbal warning."

"Well, no. I was a bit afraid they’d let themselves in for something awful. But, no, there was Mr. Aziraphale in his shop large as life and grumpy as anything. You’d swear he didn’t actually want customers in that place. Anyway, we had a nice cup of tea and a catch up." 

"A... catch up?" 

"Well, yes. Now, he couldn’t give many details, really, but he said that they had dealt with things as best they could and were safe enough for the time being. And, really, when you think about it, he probably means safe for a century or two. Well, you would if you lived that long, wouldn’t you? And he was quite happy to chatter away about his books and Mr. Crowley and restaurants as long as you’d let him."

Anathema sighed and half-listened to a brief appeal to a non-existent referee outside. "Well, that’s something, I guess. They kind of put themselves on the line, after all. I can’t say I didn’t worry about them getting blowback, even if they are, well, whatever they are. So, will you stay in touch? Hey, did you tell him you were moving down here?"

Tracy topped up her tea. "Oh, he had a right laugh when I told him. Said he shouldn’t be surprised, given everything, but he’d pay good money to see me and Mr. Shadwell in a cottage with wisteria at the windows. I told him, Now, don’t be so smart. Just because him and his young man can’t sort themselves out doesn’t mean he can be pass-remarkable about other people."

Anathema blinked as she tried to follow Tracy’s train of thought[3]. The sounds of the football game had faded away entirely by now. She decided to go with the easiest question first. "I’m sorry, pass-remarkable?"

"Oh sorry, dearie, something my mum used to say. Being snippy. Passive aggressive, they would call it now."

Still not following, Anathema pulled a face. "Why would he be… snippy?"

Tracy rolled her eyes. "Because he’s a silly old fool who can’t get his own affairs in order and has to take it out on other people. Honestly, just because he and Mr. Crowley can’t figure out that they’re gooey-eyed for each other, doesn’t mean he can go around taking digs at people who have sorted themselves out."

"No! No, he definitely shouldn’t," Anathema was still slightly confused but by now, was intrigued. "So, you’re saying him and Mr. Crowley are.. are a thing?"

Tracy sighed. "Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? They _want_ to be but haven’t got up off their arses. Ten minutes listening to Mr. Aziraphale and trust me, dearie, you can’t miss it. ‘Crowley took me to this lovely little sushi place, Crowley found this darling incuna-whatsit for me at an auction, Crowley hung the bloody moon and stars!’"

"Okay, fair. But it could be one-sided?" Anathema decided to put ‘get in, Angel’ out of her head temporarily for the sake of her argument.

"Oof, Mr. Crowley’s nearly worse. The _looks_ I’d get when he’d see me talking to Mr. Aziraphale. Worse than the ones Vera Battersby used to give me after she found out her Ernie and me had walked out together when we were younger. And god knows, I wasn’t still holding a candle for him. I don’t know how she put up with his bad breath. _And_ he makes soppy faces at Mr. Aziraphale when he thinks no-one’s looking. Oh no, it’s the pair of them in it alright."

"Well," Anathema said philosophically after a moment, "I guess it’s some consolation that there’s actual immortal beings out there that are just as terrible at romance as the rest of us."

Tracy clinked her mug against Anathema’s. "Truer words never spoken. I mean, you’d think the world nearly ending would give you some get up and go, but no! Mr. Aziraphale, your actual heavenly angel, has just decided to keep on sitting on his arse and so does Mr. Crowley. I mean, course it’s _romantic_. Across the barricades and all that. Star-crossed lovers kept apart by Heaven and Hell! Course they couldn’t do anything about it up till they got out of _that_ mess. But they haven’t any excuse now! It’s a pity, though. I hate to think of them pining after each other and not realising. It’s the things you don’t say that you regret, isn’t it? And if they do get in trouble down the road from Heaven and Hell, (and you know they’ve not heard the last from them), they won’t have ever had a chance. From how Mr. Aziraphale talked about it, they’d be just wiped out. If they hadn’t been canny this time, they’d have snuffed it already! Awful."

Anathema made a sympathetic noise and Tracy carried on. "I just don’t know. Maybe they just need someone to give them a push. That, or a miracle. Oh, but that’s not really helped them so far, has it?"

Outside the kitchen window, Adam Young sat quietly. He didn’t _mean_ to overhear Miss Potts ("Ooh, it’s been ever so long since someone called me that!") and Anathema. It just _happened_ that he had sat down to tie his shoelaces right by the window, and Pepper and Wensleydale and Brian were arguing about what the offside rule was down by the gate and he didn’t really want to listen to them, because they didn’t know what the offside rule was[4]. And if they were talking about Grown Up Things (which is what Mum and Dad always called talk about the neighbours that Adam wasn’t meant to hear), well. Wasn’t his fault he had to tie his shoelaces. They’d probably complain if he _didn’t_ tie them and tripped and _broke_ something. 

So he couldn’t help hearing them talk about Mr. Crowley and Mr. Aziraphale. 

He hadn’t actually thought about Heaven and Hell punishing them. After he had put everything back for them (and added some really, really brilliant books[5]), he had just figured they’d be fine. He felt slightly guilty for forgetting about them. 

Adam looked at Dog severely. "Dog, why didn’t you remind me about them?"

Dog had the good grace to look slightly abashed, as if to say Well, there was a thing with a rabbit, and you know Mrs. Jenning’s cat had ideas about the bird bath and next thing you know, three months have gone _whoosh_. 

"Oh, alright," Adam subsided. "Can’t ‘spect you to remember things when _I_ don’t."

But everything had turned out alright, even if he had forgotten about them, reasoned Adam. 

Certainly wasn’t _his_ fault if they were being silly about other things now. Plenty grown-ups were silly about those other things, if he went by what his Mum and Dad said. Like his Auntie Mary running off with the man from the butchers. 

Shoelaces neatly tied, he jumped up and ran back to the others, who had moved past debating the offside rule to considering whether football would be improved if everyone had to hop. But it niggled at the back of Adam’s mind for the rest of the morning. 

That afternoon, as he and the Them were ambling through Hogsback Wood, he poked at it in his mind, like it was a nest he wasn’t entirely sure actually contained ants or not. He knew that he felt bad about it, but wasn’t sure why or what he could do about it. He didn’t want to do anything like _making_ them, because he had promised he wouldn’t do anything like that again after that Saturday at the airbase (Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian had looked relieved when he had said it. They hadn’t asked him to, but he knew he had to.) He was a bit scared of that part of himself, the part that could change something _in_ someone. It was one thing to make a hole in a hedge for Dog to go through, or to make the battery in his torch last that little bit longer so he could finish reading, but that sort of thing just made him think of his friends being scared of him.

Stll. People bein’ miserable and there bein’ no _point_ …

"I heard Anathema an’ Miss Potts talking earlier," he offered, during a lull in conversation (the argument about whether octopuses should be the size of dogs so everyone could have one as a pet having reached an impasse).

"Was it about how Mr. Tyler asked Sergeant Shadwell to join the Neighbourhood Watch?" Brian asked. "Because my mum and dad were talking about that and they said that they hadn’t heard language like that since Great-Uncle Sidney was alive and he was in the navy!" 

"Lit’rally everyone’s heard about that!" Adam scoffed. "Bet even people in London have heard about that ages ago. An’ it wasn’t about that anyway."

He looked expectantly at his friends. 

"What did you hear them talking about?" asked Wensleydale obligingly.

" ‘Bout grown ups. S’pose it’s boring. You prob’ly wouldn’t think it’s int’restin’." Adam strode ahead of the rest of Them projecting a profound air of detached disinterest worthy of a cat pretending not to care about what’s in the goldfish bowl.

A chorus of "No! Go on, tell us!" followed him into their lair.

He turned and made a show of softening. "Oh, alright."

They threw themselves down in their usual seats and Adam took centre-stage.

"It’s about That Saturday," he began. "You remember those two weird blokes?" 

They nodded. "Really weird," agreed Pepper.

"Weird names," said Brian. "Syrup-pail an’ that."

"Aziraphale an’ Crowley," Wensleydale corrected him.

"Well, Anathema an’ Miss Potts were talkin’ and started talkin’ about them and they were saying Oh, in’t it awful, they’re all miserable an’ mopin’," Adam was, as usual, embroidering somewhat on reality, "They’re fading away to nothing with all the mopin’."

"But why are they moping?" asked Wensleydale. " _I_ don’t see why. They’re grown ups and not just _any_ grown ups, but kind of magic grown ups. Can’t they jus’... do anything they want?"

Adam glared at him impatiently. "Well, I’m tryin’ to tell you, but I keep getting interrupted! Anyway! They’re mopin’ cause they’ve been in love with each other for absolutely aaaages an’ are star-crushed lovers an’ they won’t tell each other! An’ that’s _silly_!"

"Why won’t they tell each other?" asked Brian. "Wensley’s right, they can do anythin’ they want. What’s stopping them?"

"Grown ups are always silly about love and all that," said Pepper. "My mum says that it rots your brain an’ you end up in a leaky tent in a field in Wales with mushrooms growing between your toes if you don’t come to your senses."

"Grown ups are silly about lots of stuff," said Adam authoritatively. "Shouldn’t be surprised that love is one of them. An’ they prob’ly don’t think they _can_ do anythin’ they want. Grown ups are always making up rules to stop people doing anythin’ they want, stands to reason they’d make up rules for themselves to stop doing what they want, too."

"Well, that’s just stupid," Pepper decided. "I wouldn’t do that. Rules are tools of the patriarchy, anyway."

Wensleydale looked uncomfortable. "Rules aren’t always bad. Sometimes they’re just ‘Keep Out Of The Lion Enclosure’. That’s a good one."

The rest of the Them looked unconvinced.

"Bet I could make friends with a lion," they thought as one. "Bet it’d be _easy_."

"I’m jus’ sayin’," Adam continued, shaking off thoughts of a lion walking to school with him. "It’s silly them bein’ miserable at each other when they could be happy. And Mum always says to Dad that ev’ryone would be a lot better off if they stopped gettin’ in their own way." 

Brian looked slightly confused. "What’s a star-crust lover, anyway? Is it about sandwiches?"

Wensleydale screwed up his face and thought for a moment. "No, I think it’s somethin’ to do with when your birthday is." 

"That’s a star-sign. And they’re just for distractin’ the masses from ev’ry day life," said Pepper. "Auntie Pat lends loads of books about people not telling each other that they’re in love to my mum, though. Might be in them. Maybe we can borrow some."

"Thought ev’ryone knew what star-crushed lovers were," said Adam dismissively. "Thought ev’ryone knew that. They’re… they’re…" he struggled. "They’re when you’ve got people so cross about you bein’ in love that they try to get stars or, or planets or astereroids to fall on you."

The mental image of this quietened the others for a few moments.

"Urgh, that’s _‘orrible_ ," Brian shuddered. "Can’t ‘magine bein’ that upset that people are happy, you’d want to do _that_."

"If I thought someone would do that, I’d probably be too scared to say anything as well," agreed Wensleydale. 

"Shouldn’t be allowed, bein’ that cross," Pepper added. 

"Oh. But if they’re magic," said Brian slowly, "Wouldn’t they be able to fix it so people couldn’t do that?"

"If the people who want to do that are magic too, they can’t. An’ they’re that lot in Heaven and Hell," Adam scuffed the ground with his toe, shoving the leaves around, then brightened. "But _that’s_ alright, cos they told them off and made them leave them alone!"

"Then why are they mopin’? Seems to _me_ , they’re alright now. Nothin’ stoppin’ them from bein’ happy _now_ ," said Pepper. 

Adam rolled his eyes. "They’re _grown ups_ , Pepper. I _tole_ you, they’re silly. They haven’t figured out that nothin’s stoppin’ them. They just need someone to give them a push!"

"What kind of a push?" Wensleydale asked dubiously.

" _You_ know. Remind them about romancin’ and stuff. Maybe they need some of those books Pepper’s aunt has."

"An’ Miss Potts has them too! I saw a big box full of them!" Pepper chimed in.

"Yeah! They had all those blokes on the front with the floppy shirts an’ stuff," Adam remembered.

"Or listen to some of those soppy songs that old people like," Wensleydale offered. "My nan and grandad always get all embarrassin’ when that sort of thing’s on the radio. They say it reminds them of their courtin’ days."

"Maybe they should get each other chocolates! And flowers! Or save each other from an evil Sheriff or a Duke or somethin’!" Brian exclaimed.

Adam tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Those are good ideas. I was ‘bout to suggest somethin’ quite like those ideas, actually. But they’d be a start, anyway." He stopped and looked pensive.

"Adam? What’s wrong?" Brian asked.

"I could. Well, I could change a few things. Not _make_ them or mess with their heads or anything!" he said quickly as his friends’ eyes widened. "Jus’ give them that push. Leave some of those books around. Have the radio play them those songs. Hints, an’ that."

The Them’s initial apprehension melted away. Well, if it was only _hints_ …

Brian shrugged. "Well, I suppose. It’s doin’ them a favour, really. If they really are that silly about it."

Adam breathed a sigh of relief. "They’re very silly. _I_ think the older you get, the more silly you get."

He looked at Pepper and Wensleydale, who looked at each other. They turned back to Adam and nodded.

"It’s not like it’s doin’ anythin’ they won’t get around to anyway at some point. We’d just be makin’ them do it now rather ‘n wastin’ any more time," Pepper reasoned.

"It’s only sensible, really," Wensleydale offered. "They’ll only make other people miserable, if they’re miserable. Fixing that would stop loads of people being miserable. You’d be cheerin’ everyone right up."

"I would? Yeah, I would! No! _We_ would," Adam decided magnanimously. "It’s all our ideas, after all. I’m jus’ the one putting them where Mr. Aziraphale and Mr. Crowley have to look at them."

This decided, the Them carried on with their plans for the rest of the afternoon, which involved attempting to climb the tallest tree they could find for the purposes of scientifically determining if they could see as far as the edge of Upper Tadfield from the top of it[6].

In London that night, amongst other things, a shelf of books popped silently into existence in Soho, and in a flat elsewhere, some plants were given a suggestion they were unable to ignore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1. If the Metatron had received any message along the lines of "Me Almighty, just talk to each other!", they weren’t passing it on.[return to text]  
> 2. It was a matter of ongoing concern to Aziraphale that Tracy somehow always managed to turn up five minutes before closing, no matter how he changed the opening hours.[return to text]  
> 3. Many things were competing to be most confusing to Anathema in this. What precisely wisteria was, why Mr. Shadwell being near it was so hilarious, how a millenia old demon could be classed as a ‘young man’ and Tracy’s turn of phrase describing Aziraphale’s attitude.[return to text]  
> 4. Neither did Adam. Much like the fate of any cassettes left in the car for longer than two weeks, any explanation of the offside rule transmutes in the mind after a sufficient period of time to the lyrics of I Know Him So Well.[return to text]  
> 5. He hadn’t left a copy of his book in Aziraphale’s bookshop. He was rewriting it to include the Pirate Detective’s friends and loyal dog. And some dragons.[return to text]  
> 6. Results were inconclusive due to the inability to define what counted as the edge of Upper Tadfield.[return to text]  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam's 'help' hits London.

Even in Soho, four in the morning was a quiet hour. The street lights shone on empty footpaths, occasionally finding a drunken wanderer or a shift-worker heading home. All the buildings, bar one, were dark.

The exception, A.Z. Fell & Co. (Booksellers to the Gentry), was currently occupied by two old, old friends who were engaged in yet another drunken argument that, like many others, had repeated innumerable times over the centuries.

“It was jus’ a sandwich, angel! How was I s’posed to know he didn’t want any?”

Aziraphale tried to fix Crowley with a cool, unimpressed look, but this was spoiled by his inability to see properly. It wasn’t his fault. Crowley, Aziraphale muzzily thought, should really be more conscientious about staying in focus and not being all thingummy at the edges. 

“It may have been just a sandwich to you, dear boy, but Patrick had been up there for, oh, f’r days and days! He went up there to get away from sandwiches! And here comes Crowley with exactly what he didn’t want, asking if he was peckish!”

Aziraphale punctuated this by waving around a mostly-empty bottle and narrowly avoided knocking himself out. 

Crowley, for his part, was defending himself from the very precarious position of half hanging off the couch, with his cheek mashed into the armrest.

“That,” he slurred, “that was me bein’ worried for his health. Up there for ages, no water, no food. Thought ‘e was done for. An’ I thought, well, Crowley, maybe he jus’ doesn’t like the food here. Misses home an’ that. Maybe all he wants is a nice sandwich jus’ like mother used to make. So off I toddle, an’ toast some bread an’ melt some cheese. An’ what do I get? Flung into the bloody North Atlantic off Malin Head! There’s gratid- gratu- thanks!”

He tried to pout with his whole body, but ended up drifting ever more southward towards the carpet. Good enough for him, Aziraphale thought, considering the ridiculous position he had started off in. What he had against sitting on things correctly, he had never understood.

“An’ all those Irish snakes got the heave-ho, too, cos of his strop. Poor bastards. That water was bloody freezing.”

Aziraphale had intended on carrying on their bickering but the impetus was momentarily lost as he imagined thousands of snakes with Irish accented hisses, complaining, flailing and swimming with all their might towards Scotland with Crowley at the head. 

He hiccuped. 

“Still. He must have been, oof, very cross. Very, very cross. I always had to do both our jobs in Ireland.”

“Well, _I_ had to do both our jobs in Florence!” Crowley thrust out a finger that would have been accusing if it hadn’t been pointing at the leg of Aziraphale’s armchair.

Aziraphale hiccuped again, but attempted to imbue it with a hint of dismissiveness. “That wasn’t exactly a hardship. You liked the Medicis! Least, you always said you liked their parties. And! I had nothing to do with those Pazzis. Lorenzo jus’, jus’ _overreacted_. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time!” He tried to look innocent, but all he managed was to cross his eyes. Crowley cackled.

“At the _Duomo_. With the pope’s nephew. And a load of tetchy blokes with swords.”

“I was being a good influence on the boy!”

“By bringing him to the front row of a murder?”

Aziraphale looked sheepish. “Well, my dear, there were so many people there, At least ten thousand! And young Raffaello really couldn’t see anything, so well, thought I’d bring him up a bit nearer to the altar. And, oh dear, how was I to know?” He again flailed the bottle about, this time in a gesture of inebriated helplessness.

Crowley struggled to straighten himself up, engaging in a fight with the couch cushions first. “I know. A murderous conspiracy in Renaissance Italy. Who’d have seen that coming, eh?”

Aziraphale made a moue rather than answer. He was still mildly put out with Lorenzo[7]. He directed a baleful look at his glass. Empty again. “How many bottles have we left, anyway?”

Crowley squinted over the back of the couch. “Think that’s the last of the ones we brought up. Get another? Or start again?”

Aziraphale grimaced. He felt far too lazy to summon a new bottle and drinking the same wine twice in one night never sat well with him, physically or mentally. While others said it was a problem when you were drinking alone, Aziraphale considered drinking the same bottle of wine twice in one night poor for morale. “No, best to sober up, I think.” He winced as the alcohol left his system.

“Ugh. You’re probably right,” Crowley muttered and shook it out of his system with a dramatic groan. After a moment, he stood up and turned to look out at the street and Aziraphale’s face fell behind him, in anticipation of what he knew what would come next.

“Getting bright outside. Suppose I’d best be off soon. Err, got a thing.”

He turned back and Aziraphale quickly tacked a bright smile on his face.

“Of course, my dear. Your, err, thing sounds most important. I might see you tomorrow?”

Crowley threw his sunglasses back on and nodded sharply. “I’ll come round later. Maybe that Ethiopian place you heard about. Ciao.”

He grabbed his jacket and quickly walked to the door, Aziraphale a few steps behind him.

“You know, it’s-” Aziraphale stopped suddenly.

“It’s what, angel?”

The thought _It’s really quite silly for you to leave now_. Why won’t you stay? pushed dangerously close to the front of Aziraphale’s consciousness.

“It’s looking like it’s going to be a lovely day,” he finished feebly.

Crowley looked sceptically up at the grey clouds. Aziraphale’s judgement of the weather had been suspicious ever since Day 20 of the Flood when he had turned to Crowley with an entirely sincere Goodness, looks like it’s clearing up. 

“If you say so, angel. Anyway, see ya.” With that, he stepped out into the early morning light.

Aziraphale closed and locked the door after him. He considered thumping his head against it a few times, but decided that he might want to retain some dignity. Instead he straightened his bowtie and turned back to clear up after their night’s drinking. 

A few minutes later, he was ensconced in his reading room with a cup of lapsang souchong and a few bourbon creams. He wasn’t reading, even if he did have a delightful tale of Lord Dunsany’s open on his lap. Instead, he was brooding.

It was hard _not_ to notice that Crowley seemed to run out of the bookshop every night just as Aziraphale was about to ask him to stay. 

It was equally hard not to notice that _he_ noticed it. And had Feelings about it.

First, there was the fact that it was happening. Second, the fact that he knew it was happening. Third, that he was somehow, er, Feeling about it.

And he didn’t want to think about any of the three of them. That, he knew, would lead only to dangerous mental territory.

Aziraphale was a dab hand at putting feelings (and Feelings) in metaphorical boxes that were then metaphorically stored at the very metaphorical back of the metaphorical storeroom of his mind. But, in his experience, Crowley-related feelings were extremely difficult to corral[8]. Metaphorical or not.

“My fancy had better have stayed in the fields we know,” he murmured to himself as he tried again to focus on his book. 

Half a minute later, there was a aethereal ‘pop’ and he felt air displace in the shop. 

“Oh thank goodness,” he muttered and, closing the Dunsany, stood up with alacrity.

He hurried out to the shop floor and slowly turned around, trying to find the source of the disturbance he had felt.

He closed his eyes and reached out into the aether.  Superficially, it was just as it always should be before he opened up[9], with nothing moving, bar himself and the motes of dust in the air.

Right now, however, something was amiss.

Nothing was _missing_ , no. Just... amiss. What could it- ah.

There hadn’t been a bookshelf in that corner when he last looked there.

Aziraphale had privately admitted long ago that he was a little bit absent-minded, especially when he was distracted with something especially interesting[10]. An entire extra bookshelf fitting snugly (and smugly) into a corner that had previously admitted not even the most bijou of shelves[11] was too much to go unnoticed, though. 

He moved closer to it. It didn’t seem to be particularly special, save the fact that it hadn’t been there half an hour ago. 

Could it be a message? A warning? Aziraphale’s natural tendency towards over-anxiousness raised its frazzled head. They had only ever hoped to put off those in Heaven and Hell who wanted to do them harm, it warned. Apprehensively, he inched closer.

Oh.

Well, that really was quite a lot of Barbara Cartland novels.

Aziraphale deflated. 

It wasn’t that he’d wanted it to be a sign of trouble, oh heav- ah, _somewhere_ forfend. No, he was entirely happy with living quietly and without fear of discorporation by his former colleagues or the entire planet being overrun by a celestial war. 

Really, those sorts of things made enjoying a sit-down with a bestiary[12] and a nice cup of tea dreadfully challenging. 

He was perfectly happy with everything being back to normal, thank you very much.

Even if, a mental voice that sounded suspiciously like Crowley piped up, everything wasn’t really back to normal. This was an entirely new normal, where they were free to do whatever they pleased. 

Part of what he had been so desperately not thinking about only a few minutes before (and on and off for a good few months prior to that) was that he was having just the slightest amount of trouble with that. The great vista of Things He’d Always Wanted But Denied Himself lay ahead of him and nothing he did brought it any closer. When he tried to inch towards something (or someone) he wanted, they ran like the hounds of- well, hounds, in any case, were after them. He had decided for his own easement to stick to Things He Was Comfortable With. And his mind would do well to remember that, he thought severely.

But distraction in the form of a shelf of prophecies (for example) would have been something else to consider, instead of- 

Well. It would have been a distraction, anyway.

Yes. Distraction. He shook himself, then eyed the brimming shelves critically. Not just Dame Cartland’s novels, but a sizeable amount from under the Mills & Boon umbrella. From his brief discussions with would-be customers[13] over the years, he understood that these had been the leaders in the field of popular romantic fiction. At least, in the 1970s and 1980s. He supposed that he was quite out of touch with modern romantic novels, now. He’d enjoyed Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, and tolerated Walter Scott’s. And he had developed quite a fondness[14] for Miss Heyer’s books. He’d lost his appetite for the genre around the end of the 1960s.

 _In any case_ , Aziraphale tried to drag his thoughts back from that particular scaly precipice, he still had a bookshelf full of books he hadn’t had a few hours previously. That in itself was worrisome. 

Perhaps he’d been too quick to write them off as harmless. After all, there was nothing to say that romance novels couldn’t be vehicles for prophesy, was there? Hadn’t the burning bush had been an odd one too, in its day? It would be wise to check, surely, before writing them off. 

Heaven had always made testing prophets a far more complicated affair than it had to be. Tuning in on various celestial wavelengths to see if it was shared by this particular human, for example. Aziraphale, over the centuries, had perfected his own far more reliable methods.

He closed his eyes and drew a book out at random. 

_A Halo For The Devil._

Aziraphale’s eyes widened. 

He picked another.

_The Devilish Deception._

He tried again.

 _An Angel In Hell._

And again.

_A Very Naughty Angel._

That last was dropped on the ground along with the rest as Aziraphale gave a (highly dignified, naturally) shriek and jumped back from the bookshelf.

He stared at the garishly illustrated paperback covers at his feet and tried to stave off a mild breakdown.

They were on to them. Well, whoever ‘they’ were who would consider the use of romance novels to send a warning. _Someone_ was on to them, regardless.

“I haven’t even managed to fully catalogue all the new books,” he complained to the walls, wringing his hands.

Oh, this really was just too irritating. He pursed his lips. Special measures would have to be taken.

Sod the bourbon creams. He’d have to break out the French Fancies.

Meanwhile, in Crowley’s Mayfair flat, accusations and invective were being flung at plants. This was not out of the ordinary, as any of these plants could testify (if they were provided an interpreter and an occasion). However, the impetus was most definitely out of the ordinary. 

Half an hour previously, Crowley had sped through the quiet London streets, accompanied by a soundtrack of his own swearing. This had been prompted in the past, among other things, by: the arrival of the Anti-christ on Earth, losing said Anti-christ, realising that he left his best lighter in Hell (given to him by Janis Joplin) and poor advice given on Gardeners’ Question Time. This particular instance was not being prompted by incorrect advice for growing _Iberis Sempervirens_ in a chalky soil.

“Maybe that Ethiopian place you heard about!” he repeated to himself in a despairing voice. “For! Fuck’s! Ssssaaake!” 

He viciously changed gear and needlessly overtook nothing at all. 

“Oh look, you’re looking like you want to ask me to stay over! Time for me to take to my heels like some idiot from a fairy story with impractical shoes! Stay? Oh no, couldn’t possibly do that! For some unknown reason, I’m fucking incapable! No, no, think I’ll just literally run away from any chance of that happening! _Fuck_!”

Crowley had come to the conclusion that the early morning was a very dangerous time to spend with Aziraphale. He had figured this out on the day after the Apocalypse hadn’t happened. They had escaped their respective employers and went to the Ritz. Afterwards, they had retired to the bookshop and got absolutely face-meltingly drunk. 

When dawn had come, he had been lying on the couch with an ancient bottle of Burgundy tucked in by his elbow. Aziraphale was giggling at some story he was trying to remember to tell Crowley involving the Sistine Chapel, Michaelangelo and Julius II. Just after he’d reached the punchline (“Is that mine own spindle, Buenarotti?!”), Aziraphale gave him what could only be termed a completely unprecedented lascivious wink. 

Crowley, sobriety hitting him like a bottle to the back of the head in a pub brawl, had turned into a snake. Aziraphale had written it off as him needing a good nap after everything. Crowley hadn’t argued.

The next night/morning, Aziraphale had actually asked him if he’d like to stay the night which worried Crowley given that Aziraphale didn’t actually sleep, to his knowledge. And the request had been made, he was pretty sure, with undertones that he hadn’t even realised Aziraphale was capable of making. There had been _eyebrow waggling_ , for Satan’s sake. He had been so poleaxed, he’d turned into a snake again. 

After this had happened three more times, he had made a habit of dramatic exits just before that Aziraphale got that ‘come up and see my etchings’ gleam in his eye. This particular morning had been in the top five of his least graceful[15]. 

And it wasn’t as if he wasn’t interested, that was the kicker. He’d only bloody love to see Aziraphale’s etchings. And his sketches. But any ‘art-appreciation’ was off the agenda until he got over his, ah, snake problem.

He pulled into his parking space by his apartment building with an ostentatious, but half-hearted handbrake turn. 

He slammed the car door closed behind him (waking up at least twenty people for the twelfth day in a row) and headed up to his flat.

Ten seconds before he reached the front door, just as an aethereal ‘pop’ summoned a bookshelf into existence in Aziraphale’s shop, a second aethereal disturbance occurred within Crowley’s flat. This did not ‘pop’. It sounded more like a ‘foomph’. 

Even at his most distracted, Crowley had a well-honed instinct for self-preservation. Any dealings with Hell’s stationery department left you with that, if not the item you had requested to be issued. It did not require this well-honed instinct, however, to notice that Something had happened in his flat. As soon as he had opened the front door, it hit him, where ‘it’ meant ‘an overwhelming floral smell’. The last time he remembered anything like it was one of Elagabalus’ bashes.

The smell wasn’t the only giveaway.

There were roses spreading all over the floor. It was like someone had spilled water and it was slowly covering the ground, except it wasn’t water; it was thorns, and petals, and stems.

Crowley stood frozen at the door, his eyes fully serpentine behind his glasses. He cautiously tipped one of the leaves with his toe. It didn’t devour him whole, or disintegrate him. 

That was a positive, he supposed. And the great roseate mass didn’t seem to be crawling towards him. In fact, it seemed to have stopped crawling once it covered the floor entirely. He sniffed the air. Behind the smothering floral overtones, there was just a hint of unnaturalness. Well, it was more like _more_ than naturalness. Not magic. It was as if your standard flower had been turned up to eleven. 

He tried to get rid of them with a demonic miracle. No joy. He tried clicking his fingers a few times (and tested it by turning on and off the coffee maker just to see if it was him), but nothing.

Well. This was not terrifying in the slightest.

He started to pick his way carefully through them, pausing every now and then to make sure it wasn’t a trap. 

The mass seemed to have come from the plant room. Crowley didn’t like that. He didn’t have roses, as a rule (he preferred perennials). The idea that someone knew enough about that room to use against him and pick something so _not Crowley_ sat badly with him. 

By the time he got to the revolving door (wedged open awkwardly by the sheer volume of plant), the foliage was so thick, he had to walk through it like thick snow, lifting his legs awkwardly up and over them. He shoved and kicked enough of them out of the way to allow himself to stand unhindered. 

Finally in, he paused for a moment and took in the entire room. Every one of the plants, no matter what kind, had sprouted these invader roses. Reds, yellows, pinks, whites, even a blue one here and there. He grabbed the mister and stood poised. He was gratified to notice a shiver run through the room. Good.

There was _dissent_ in the ranks, after all.

He could not let this stand.

‘Alright,’ he snarled. ‘Who started this? Which one of you stepped out of line first?’

The leaves shuddered in unison. Crowley spun on his heel to threaten with a broader range. 

‘Thissss, this won’t do. When, _when_ have I ever said you could grow flowers? And not just any flowers!’

He brandished the mister viciously.

‘Roses do not grow on aloe vera plants! Or any of you! And certainly not without my permissssion!’ 

The shivering increased, but irritatingly, the roses remained intact. Once, he’d managed to terrify a ficus into doubling in size within 15 minutes. The roses’ almost insolently perfect bloom was galling.

Crowley seethed. He’d never been high up in Hell’s hierarchy, but he had some pride. Usually it was reserved for a decent spot of chaos well executed. He had allowed himself some for averting the apocalypse (on the basis that it, too, was a decent spot of chaos, even if he couldn’t really justify the use of the term ‘well executed’) and was trying to keep his hand in locally with freak traffic light malfunctions and the arrangement of rail-replacement buses. He didn’t admit to being proud of his plants, but would, if pushed, agree that he was proud of the control he exerted over his plants. 

(That this was an entirely artificial and pathetically porous differentiation was ignored.)

‘I’ll give you to the count of three. One, two-’

Before getting to three he summoned as much hellfire as he possibly could and engulfed the room in flames. 

‘Thisss is how perfidy issss rewarded.’

He stood in the centre of the flames and savoured his victory. After half a minute, he dispersed them and cleared the smoke away.

The roses remained where they were, unapologetic. The plants had the good grace to look faintly ashamed.

Crowley’s jaw dropped. The walls were blackened and scorched, as were his own clothes, but the sodding flowers were still sodding there. For a good two minutes, he stood there silent. Finally, he spoke.

‘Gnk.’

This out of the way, he turned on his heel and marched (well, it was more like an angry curvet) out of the room.

He continued until he was standing outside by his car. There he paused and considered matters (and dethorned his jeans). 

His apartment had been infested with roses of probable nefarious origins.  
These roses had withstood his own efforts to destroy them.

These roses had withstood _actual hellfire_.

He hadn’t a bloody clue why they were there or what precisely he was going to do now.

This had to mean that someone was trying to send him a message.

And that had to mean that someone was on to them.

He opened the car door and got in, for want of something to do. He then decided to panic, also for want of something to do. This was interrupted by his phone ringing. 

He fumbled it out of his dreadfully impractical pocket and checked the ID. Aziraphale. 

‘Angel! Not the best time.’

‘Yes, sorry, know you had a thing.’ Aziraphale sounded as if he was trying to sound as chipper as possible while simultaneously sounding terrified. ‘It’s just, well, Crowley, something peculiar has happened.’ His voice turned into a low, urgent whisper. ‘Crowley, I think someone knows what we did!’

Crowley’s mind managed to simultaneously go blank and also come up with several horrific predictions as to what had happened.

‘Angel, what? I mean, how? I mean, _fuck_!’

‘Well, precisely, my dear. I think you’d better come to the shop.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7 And technically, still exiled from Florence. The curious could find in one of the storerooms of the Uffizi Gallery an unattributed sketch titled ‘Fair Nobleman In Yellow Silk’. Aziraphale had been quite proud that Botticelli himself had produced the drawing that accompanied the proclamation of his exile.[return to text]  
> 8 In a lighter mood, Aziraphale had considered that this was much like Crowley himself. There wasn’t a snake habitat out there that could contain him.[return to text]  
> 9 From 6.47am until 7.22am on this particular Tuesday. He closed at 7.20am when the month contained 5 Tuesdays.[return to text]  
> 10 ‘Especially interesting’ could mean anything from an Infamous Bible to The Archers Omnibus.He had sent a letter of condolence to the BBC on the death of Grace Archer.[return to text]  
> 11 Aziraphale’s bookshelves certainly defied the laws of physics on their best days. However, even a celestial entity has to admit defeat somewhere, and that defeat had come when he had noticed the back of one of his bookshelves in the bakery down the street. Seeing those familiar editions of Aphra Behn had put him right off his lemon scone.[return to text]  
> 12 His drunken conversations with Pliny may not have yielded the most accurate descriptions of animals he’d seen, but he still enjoyed remembering them. And tales (and, indeed, tails) tended to grow in the telling. [return to text]  
> 13 Over the years, he managed to stop greeting customers with “I’m sorry, we don’t have it.” and had trained himself to at least say hello first.[return to text]  
> 14 He told himself it was more to do with the fun of assessing the attention to historical detail with a metaphorical red pen (he shuddered at the idea of a real one) rather than the romances with handsome rakes who took the plucky, yet virtuous heroine Away From All That.[return to text]  
> 15 Top of the chart was Crowley declaring that he had completely forgotten an urgent appointment with Bazalgette to discuss the Great Stink. This was not a complete lie. He had completely forgotten this in 1858. As a result, the new sewer network actually worked.[return to text]
> 
> The story Aziraphale tells Crowley about Michaelangelo and Julius II can be heard in its entirety in episode 34 of the Bugle podcast and is the glorious creation of Andy Zaltzman. If you do nothing else, please go [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfrYcRSILy8) and listen to the story of Mickey Paintbrush.
> 
> And finally, I'm an appallingly slow writer. I'm terribly sorry. Thank you for your comments. I really appreciate them. Also, HTML formatting meant I’ve tried to post this and had to delete it three times. I think I owe every person out there who has written guides to HTML footnotes a drink.


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